Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. However, I have several plotbunnies running around in my head who claim to be Naruto. I whack them with chocolate bars until they squeak, but they don't stop saying it.

Hyuuga Hiashi, who knew very well who was largely responsible for Neji's unexpectedly successful fifteenth birthday party – even with the reports of naked boys in war-paint streaking around the premises – had asked Tenten to arrange Neji's sixteenth birthday party as well. He offered to pay her for her services, which she turned down laughingly but with real offense and surprise behind it – which, Hiashi thought, spoke well for her.

The party was more important this year than it had been last year. Though Hyuugas weren't considered full adults in the eyes of the clan until their eighteenth birthday, their sixteenth year was an important stepping-stone nonetheless. It was at this point that Main House heirs usually began taking over certain aspects of clan leadership, and their cousins also begin training in whatever roles the clan had decided would be best for them. In the old days, the age of sixteen was when marriage negotiations would begin, and it was still traditionally the point at which murmurings about advantageous unions would begin to reach the ears of the teenage Hyuuga in question.

The clan would be looking very intently at this celebration for Hyuuga Neji, Branch House heir, Hyuuga prodigy, and one of the most talented shinobi in Konoha. Hiashi intended to make a statement with the party, to show how highly he regarded his nephew, and also – by allowing an outsider to take charge of the affair – how little Hiashi intended to be a slave to the tradition that had forced him along so many distasteful things in his life.

Tenten took charge of the planning with a smooth efficiency that seemed more suited to someone much older than herself. After Hiashi saw her quietly and yet thoroughly awe the kitchen staff of the Hyuuga clan, and actually get the crotchety old head chef – who could have been a Hyuuga elder could he have been pried from the kitchen, and who still saw Hiashi as the little boy whose knuckles he had rapped for trying to steal sweetmeats rather than as his clan leader – to smile, he was impressed. When she went over spreadsheets and cost-reports with every indication of knowing what she was about – indeed, her conversation with the CPA-certified Hyuuga in charge of clan finances was so laden with jargon it was nearly unintelligible to the listening Hiashi – he was more than impressed, he was intrigued, and set one of his more trusted lieutenants to check this girl's background.

He read it over one night, and a new possibility presented itself to his mind. He smiled to himself in the dark.

Tenten absentmindedly chewed on the ring-end of a kunai – a habit she'd kept from babyhood - as she studied a blueprint of the Hyuuga compound, mentally laying out the tables and chairs and seating-plans for the party. This was more complicated than it seemed – for example, making sure that the Inuzuka clan elders would not be next to anything that might emit a powerful scent, yet making sure the Nara clan-members had adequate sources of light (when they had no shadows they tended to get antsy) while keeping the Aburames far enough away from the food not to freak anyone out yet not far enough to offend the bug-users. It was like juggling several kunai with one hand – which, by the way, was an exercise in dexterity she enjoyed.

She scribbled notes onto a piece of scrap paper, planning to transfer them in a more legible hand to the sheaf of papers that would be her report to Hiashi-sama in the morning…

Tenten looked up as three very precise knocks sounded from her door. She got up and hurriedly opened the door, knowing that if she didn't Neji – who was the only one who knocked that way, as if each knock was as sharply delineated as a written character – would decide to enter by himself. She didn't have the time to deal with replacing her doorknobs again.

Sure enough, the tall white-eyed boy was leaning against the doorframe, hair sprinkled lightly with raindrops that glittered like little silver beads. A raindrop – it had begun to drizzle slightly, Tenten just noticed – rolled slowly over the high cheekbones that had become more noticeable with the maturation of Neji's looks, and Tenten caught herself following its path with hungry eyes before she snapped back to herself and invited Neji inside.

"Hey Neji," Tenten chirped, "What's up? Do you want some tea or…"

"Train with me," Neji interrupted her. He folded his arms across his chest, and fixed her with stern white eyes, looking very formidable from his six-foot height. Tenten yearned with all her might for a similar growth spurt so she wouldn't feel so small when she stood next to him.

"You've not trained for three days," Neji continued, and Tenten winced guiltily; fleetingly she wished Neji wasn't as all-knowing (at least when it came to her training, which was of paramount importance in Neji's bloodlimit eyes) as he was about her. "Let's go."

Tenten was tempted – very tempted. She hadn't trained in three days, and she hated that knowledge, the fear that her sharply-honed combat edge would begin to dull – in the level of prowess that she moved in, such subtle things as a day of missed training mattered – and she hated feeling that Neji thought her weak, that he was moving even further beyond her reach than he already was.

Moreover, her back hurt from bending over paper, and her limbs were stiff from stillness, and the thought of letting herself run and leap and fly as fast and as high as she wanted – of the feel of cold steel and smooth wood in her hands, of cool rain-damp air whipping past her as she moved – it all sounded wonderful.

But her eyes darted to the papers spread out over her table – and she sighed and visibly deflated, her shoulders slumping. "I'd like to, Neji, but I can't. I need to get these reports to Hiashi-sama ready by tonight, so that he can sign them in time for the orders tomorrow…"

Neji scowled. "They're for my birthday," he argued, distaste twisting the last word. "It doesn't have to be this…elaborate, and you don't have to be the one to do it. Come train with me."

Tenten shook her head. Neji was wrong; it did have to be this elaborate – Neji was being, for all intents and purposes, presented to the world as a favorite, a protégé, of the Clan Head – and she was going to make sure it went off without a hitch.

"I'm sorry, Neji," she said, and there was a finality in her words.

Neji's scowl deepened, and then he stalked over to her desk with long, sweeping strides. He grabbed a sheet of paper at random and studied it, brows creasing.

"Neji!" Tenten yelped, hurrying to his side. "What are you doing?"

"It's my birthday," he repeated, stubbornly. "I want to see what they're making you do for it." He reread the complicated tangle of diagrams and words, trying to make sense of it and rather failing.

Tenten hovered anxiously at his shoulder. "You don't need to, I'll take care of it, I'll do it…" she babbled.

She was silenced by a certain look Neji slanted at her from the corner of his eye. "I'll help you," he told her. "Then we can go train."

Tenten sat down slowly. "Fine," she sighed.

Much to Neji's chagrin, he found he wasn't really able to help Tenten all that much. Details like hiring caterers, arranging menus, providing entertainment, and organizing seating plans had never even crossed his mind, much less the expectation that one day he'd have to do it. He ended up being reduced to a tea/coffee (what was in that barbarous brown drink that made Tenten so addicted to it anyway?) maker, ferrying cups of hot beverage to Tenten every so often.

At some point he went out to fetch them dinner; because he certainly couldn't be trusted in the kitchen. When he came back, toting plastic bags full of Chinese take-out, he found Tenten sprawled on top of her papers, deeply asleep.

Neji stood there for a long while, just watching her.

Then he put the Chinese food into Tenten's refrigerator, sticking up a little note to inform her of her new supply of yang chow and roast duck. Then he went back to her, and carefully picked her up from her neck-straining position. She made a soft, sleepy sound and turned over against his chest, and he froze; but she did not wake.

Neji, walking as softly as he knew how (which, being a shinobi, was very soft indeed) carried her over to the living-room couch and placed her gently onto the soft green upholstery. When he tried to straighten up, he discovered that one of her hands had some tangled itself in a loose bunch of his tunic; it fell away when he pulled, and she let her arm dangle over the side of the couch.

Then he scooped up the papers arrayed on the table and put them into a single thick stack, which he stuck underneath his arm. He left her apartment, noiselessly as a ninja does, and did not even turn off the light so that no sudden change of brightness should stir her.

He made his way quickly back to his compound, not stopping until he stood in front of Hiashi's study. He knocked once on his uncle's door, and went in without waiting for the answer – which indiscretion of the careful Branch member made Hiashi's eyebrows climb.

Neji put the stack of reports on his uncle's desk with a soft 'thump'. He then proceeded to explain the whys, wherefores and hows of this deliver; and he ended by saying: " – and so you won't give her any more papers, or plans, or order-forms for her to be bothered by; she hasn't trained for three days, and she will forget how to hold a fuuma shuriken soon. I will spar with her tomorrow, and she will remember that she is kunoichi and not – not a party-maker." The note of possessive indignation, the missing 'My, mine, my own' rang very loudly in Neji's rant.

Hiashi was amused and so he agreed; but he was even more amused when Tenten came in later that evening, worrying that the papers had been stolen by "them" and that security should be immediately increased on all fronts. When she learned that Neji had taken the papers – her papers – her eyes flashed, and she seemed very likely to give Neji painful and obvious proof that she had not forgotten how to hold a shuriken.

She chased him out to one of the pebbly courtyards of the Hyuuga compound, drawing an audience of interested Hyuugas, where they proceeded to engage in a quick, flickering, fast-paced spar; which, Hiashi reflected as he watched them fight, may have been his nephew's intention all along.

A cheer went up as Tenten began to twist in the mid-air acrobatics of her Soushoryuu, and Hiashi smiled to himself again.

Author's Notes (warning, kinda long. Like this fic is turning out to be)

I know I promised the advent of the obnoxious fangirls in this chapter, but it ran on longer than I expected; so I decided to cut it into portions. They'll be here later, I promise.

Much love to Ennariel, Wildcatt, unexpection, Drake-Azaroth, mistr3ss, Alana, and everyone else who reviewed.

And, proving that reviews are good for the mind (and for the plotbunnies), a combination of Wildcatt (for another fic) and Ennariel's reviews spawned another aspect to this surprisingly long fic.

Ennariel said: 'Yayz. Can't wait for Neji-fangirls! (Hmm, are there Tenten fanboys?)'

And Wildcatt has, in the past, planted the seeds of half-naked Hyuuga boys (not necessarily Neji) running around. This has been nourished by saccharinesyrup's fanarts of said half-naked Hyuuga boys. Sooo…this is my reply to Ennariel.

"And there are Tenten fanboys. You've met them; they're the Hyuuga cousins and other assorted interested young males Tenten spoke to during the party! (And who hid her from the birthday-boy) Heh."

Kukukuku! (grins evilly)